Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the face -painting money.
    I grabbed my red trench coat and pulled dog -printed puddle boots onto my feet.
    Templeton jumped on the kitchen table and started licking his long black tail, which was coated with strawberry swirl ice cream. He watched me between licks with disapproval in his eyes.
    “It was an accident.” I plucked the ice cream container off of the floor and tossed it into the kitchen wastebasket. I’d deal with the stain the spilt ice cream left on the rug later.
    He bore his fangs, and I grabbed my keys and cell before leaving the apartment. The drive to campus took less than five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten something as important as my paintings and the fanny pack of money. I groaned. I’d been too eager to escape Derek, my alleged special friend. I prayed the money and paintings were still there.
    The tacky Halloween decorations emitted an eerie orange glow as I drove by fraternity row. I pulled into the parking lot by the practice football field in my new-to-me small SUV. The parking lot had light posts, but the practice field was pitch black. The team sometimes practiced at night. Four giant dark floodlights loomed over the field, not that I knew where the switch was to turn them on. Instead, I reached into the backseat of my car for a flashlight.
    My puddle boots skidded across the slick leaves that had blown across the field, and I stumbled over my own two feet. All the booths were closed up. The food vendors had padlocks on their carts. This was a good move; I could envision some of the male underclassmen breaking in and stealing all their frozen French fries. I neared the crafter booths and saw those booths were closed up tight as well. Apparently, the crafters trusted the Martin students as much the food people did. I hoped the underclassmen hadn’t been to my booth, and if they had, that they took the money and not my paintings.
    The weak light of the flash finally fell on the cheap blue awning of my so-called booth. I trained the light under the table and saw the wheels of the blue cart. I hurried over, relieved to find all the paintings and money present and accounted for. I snapped the fanny pack around my waist.
    I swung the flashlight left and right before heading back to the car, and as I did, the light fell on Tess’s booth. My light wobbled. Her display was still up. All the baskets were there as if waiting for morning. Tess seemed ditzy, but I couldn’t believe she’d leave her precious baskets out all night. With my rudimentary knowledge of the effects of water on wood and wood’s ability to expand and contract, I didn’t think it could be good for the baskets to be exposed to the elements like that. Tess would have known this better than anyone.
    Immediately, a knot developed in the pit of stomach. I inched toward the booth. The closer I got to the booth the more my stomach tightened.
    The baskets hanging from the coat tree looked like withered pieces of fruit. I gave myself a mental headshake. I blamed my edginess on darkness and the closeness of Halloween. But deep down I knew it was more than that, much more. I stepped closer, although a part of me, a big part, wanted to get the heck out of there and fast.
    Despite the cold night, sweat trickled down my neck and inside the collar of my pajamas. I looked over the edge of Tess’s booth and made my gruesome discovery. My hand flew to my mouth.
    Tess, still in the jeans, sweatshirt, and festival polo, lay sprawled face down in the grass. A huge sycamore leaf clung to her cheek. After a second, I realized it was held there with blood. A large dent dominated the back of her head, covered with blood-matted hair. If Tess had darker hair, perhaps the sight of the blood wouldn’t be so dramatic, but up against her pale ash-blond mop, the blood was impossible to ignore. Dark cranberry red, a hue I doubted any pulverized beetle could duplicate.
    I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. I